Lay Your Head on My Chest, Come Feel My Heartbeat, We Can Park the Jeep, Pump Mobb Deep and Just Spark the Butt

So we are currently trying to struggle through the premiere of Brothers and Sisters, which we tivoed weeks ago but have not yet attempted. I like Calista Flockhart from her Ally days and Rachel Griffiths from Six Feet Under and there are certainly some other talented acting folks around. Based on the first twenty minutes, the acting is utterly failing to overcome two much more significant problems:

1. Calista Flockhart’s character is not only conservative, but seems to be modeled around the Ann Coulter-youngish-blondish-not uglyish conservative chick. I’m not sure I could get around the conservative part in the first place, but I’m virtually certain that I can’t get around the fictional attempt to render human and/or likable one of the most vitriolic skeezes around. All the Ann Coulter knowledge I need I’ll get from the Rude Pundit.

2. The writing is awful. Sorkin didn’t put a lot of conservative viewpoints on his show, but at least there was the occasional Republican who didn’t sound like either a straw-person fascist or unable to string a sentence together. The only piece of televised dialogue as bad as her defense of conservatism I’ve seen recently was Close to Home’s horrendous attempt to imitate CSI in an episode about sleeping beauty syndrome rapists.

I’m pretty sure we’re moments away from erasing the other two episodes we have tivoed, since its not like we have enough time to watch even the TV we actually do enjoy. Oops, that did it. We stopped at about 40 minutes when Ally started explaining that she was only “6 blocks away when the towers fell.” There are limited times when talking about 9/11 in some melodramatic way are tolerated by me, but this was not among them. Besides the fact that Smith was canceled 3 episodes in, this makes Bros+Sis’s the first casualty of our fall season.

Had a long weekend in Lexington which included some pretty decent moments. One of our teams went 3-5, but had to debate Cal’s top team in a 3-3 bracket and then just missed ending up 4-4. That’s obviously not extraordinary, but it’s a good place to be at Kentucky, early in the year, when one of our debaters was probably at her 8th-9th tournament ever. The other team had a couple tough losses, but half of it started really getting involved in this season less than a week ago, so 2-6 is something to build on. I was amazed to see that I judged 7 out of the 8 debates I was committed for, which seems to be solely a result of the fact that Dartmouth doesn’t mind me around. When they don’t get to bring 5 teams to Wake, I might end up spending most of the weekend watching football.

The far more important part of being in Lexington was the food and let me tell you, it pwnd. We landed Friday and immediately upon starting out down the highway discovered that Kentucky is in fact home to THE CRAVE! I got 10 burgers and a sack of fries, which enabled me to enjoy riding in the van far more than I typically do. We got set up in the hotel, cut some cards, did some drills and made it out to a joint called Billy’s Barbecue in the Chevy Chase area of Lexington. The wings were incredible, the light cornbread (which the menu described as a sort of combination of cornbread and white bread) was outstanding, but the cheese grits were not as good as I had hoped for. The star of the night, however, was the mutton which I decided to give a try. I had actually never had bbq mutton before, since it is a sort of Western Kentucky pit specialty and I have very little experience there. It definitely had some of the taste of lamb, but also this almost game-like twang. The meat was not as fatty as pork, but still perfectly moist and pulled to exactly the right size. I highly recommend it next time you head to the University of Kentucky.

Lunch on Saturday was Qdoba, which I recognize isn’t anything extraordinary, but since they don’t fucking exist in Western New York for God only knows what reason, it and the trip to Chipotle on Monday were a taste treat as well. Saturday night we checked out a spot I found reviewed in a number of places called Bourbon and Toulouse. The food is cheap and good. Katie and I each got a full plate of high quality Cajun food and a soda, plus tip, for 16 bucks. The jumbalaya sells out within a couple hours of it being made, so I had to opt for the gumbo, which still ruled. Quality vegan and vegetarian options as well as a generally cool little joint inhabited and staffed by cool people. Also in the Chevy Chase area and rocking. Sunday night we were tired and made the classic run to the Waffle House. I have never lived anywhere where there were Waffle Houses available, and as far as my cholesterol is concerned, that’s prolly a good thing. Waffle House really knows how to hash a brown though, I’ll tell you that much.

Final Kentucky story before I grab a feather and start playing with Hippo. We flew through Newark on our way home, though our layover was only about 30 minutes long. I went in to hit the bathroom and walking out, as I was walking in, was this pretty significantly sized dude and another guy behind him, even bigger. I gave a brief thought to the fact that the original dude looked like Fat Joe, but dismissed it pretty quickly. When I returned from the bathroom, the subject of conversation was exactly the same question. Specifically, it was whether or not the dude who was walking out of the coffee place was Fat Joe. I was doubtful, but spotting the nearby posse wearing what were identified by others as Terror Squad pendants, we confirmed that it was in fact the Fat one. I know enough about him to think it was cool that we saw him in the airport, but not enough to care about getting his autograph, like Gunther did. It was a good, if fairly inconsequential celebrity encounter.

Alright, Hippo wants a feather, preferably on a stick, to be shaken nearby her kitten face and it continues to appear that the feather is not going to start shaking itself.

Peace,

MB-K